Canonfire
by moodiful819
Summary: A collection of various Tahnorra oneshots and ficlets of varying subjects and ratings. Ch. 1: Two months after Korra dies, Tahno has a nightmare.


Title: Witching Hour  
Summary: Two months after Korra dies, Tahno has a nightmare.

**A/N:** This little thing came out of a plot-bunny where Tahno is a single-father, just because I've seen a few summaries where Korra gets pregnant and has to raise the baby by herself, and I wanted a role-reversal. Also because I wanted to make Tahno essentially have Korra-feels and to do an Amon-nightmare sequence, which ended up morphing into a bloodbending fight and a whole lot more angst than I meant for there to be. I WILL REIMBURSE YOU FOR YOUR TISSUE-USAGE. This is my sworn promise for when stories I write that are so sad that even I cry. Just know it won't be monetary (You wish. _I wish._). Maybe a happy oneshot or a fruit basket? Maybe a cabbage?

Also, thank you to everyone who voted! The winning name was Akiak (Brave or Prize depending on the translation), and he appears in one more piece that will appear later in Canonfire.

This collection is dedicated to all the Tahnorra shippers out there, because every time I think we're down for the count, I find another one of you and I fangirl because I'm not alone. We aren't alone, and even if he doesn't show up in Book Two, Tahnorra will live on. Sail on!

_Disclaimer: Do not own Legend of Korra._

* * *

It is the middle of the night when Tahno wakes up with a gasp.

Head still spinning from the flood of blood shooting into the space between his ears, his gasp is still echoing off the walls. In the dark, his room feels at once impossibly large and small. The word "claustrophobia" comes to mind, but only that. A single drop in the darkness.

Working saliva around his dry, parched mouth, he attempts to collect the breath that has shot out of him. The sweat has begun to cool; one hand fisted as white as the sheets it clutches, he rakes the other hand through his hair, sweeping inky black vines from his face. His hands are clammy and his hair is slicked with the oily aftermath his nightmare has left him with. He feels disgusting, but it's a lot better than the alternative _which is nothing at all_.

His heartbeat still racing, he tries to convince himself that he is fine. Everything is normal; Amon isn't here…

But it's a hard thing to sell to himself when he had just seen him in his mind a few seconds ago, and in the flesh just a few months before.

_Amon. Noatok._ No matter what he called himself, he was a monster all the same, and it doesn't change a thing at all that the man ran a chill up Tahno's spine. Even now, Tahno feels the glacial ice freezing in his blood.

Hand pressed against his right eye, he tries to ignore the memory of his nightmare, ignore the monster behind the mask, but it's hard to do as images of red and white lash out him through the shadowy gaps of his fingers. He can feel his heartbeat kick up again like the engine to one of Asami's racecars; his breathing shallows and harshens between echoes of throbs and pulses in his temples. It is a lot like the last time…

'_I thought it was over…'_

The soft padding of feet on the carpet shoots through the chaos like an assassin's blade.

"Daddy…?"

And that's all it takes for him to freeze, rub a haggard hand over his face, and sober up like nothing has happened. _Nothing happened_, and he slowly lies back down, drawing sleep into his voice as if water from a well.

"Akiak? It's way past your bedtime. What's the matter?" he asks, rubbing his eye for good measure as he motions for his son to join him, watching as the boy pushes open the door and waddles into bed with a stuffed penguin-seal in his hands. Even at 8-yrs-old, he has trouble scaling the height of his parent's bed.

"I had a nightmare," he answers, and the reply of _"Me too"_ almost falls off his tongue like a dying star before he bites it back. Stomps it and crushes it in his jaw before swallowing it for good measure because he was a parent now, and he couldn't be afraid. He couldn't afford to be anymore.

As Tahno thinks to himself, his son has swung his legs in front of him, sitting cross-legged in the crook of his father's outstretched arm. The brush of the toy's fleece wings is what brings Tahno from his reverie, watching as his son idly bounces the toy in his lap. Pausing suddenly, he turns to his father with a gravity that makes the older man sit up in bed.

"Dad…he's not coming back, right?"

His son looks up at him with all the trust a child can bestow their father reflected in his pale blue-grey eyes. Eyes like the moon, eyes like his... Other than a slightly darker skin tone, Akiak is the spitting image of his father, and while it had been a triumph of ego when he had been born, Tahno cannot help but resent that he will never see his wife's wide blue eyes again outside of moments frozen on photo paper and inside his own head.

"Yes, Akiak, he's never coming back. Your mother made sure of that," he says quietly.

Akiak nods thoughtfully once, fumbling with one of the pairs of wings, before asking a single question. _"Why?"_

Inside of that one word is the echoes of thousands of others. Why did Amon do that? Why was he bad? Why was everyone so scared of him? Why did my mother have to fight him? Why can't I see mom anymore? Why is she gone?

Tahno doesn't have answers for that, not really. Though he has always been the more cultured one—more obnoxious; more _boring,_ she had called it—Korra had always been the worldlier one between the two. She had been the one with the answers, but she was gone; now it was his job to have them.

As he looks at his son, he doesn't know what to tell him. Even the excuse of "I'll tell you when you're older" doesn't cut it because Tahno knows this will not be an answer made easier with time—that years from now, Tahno will dread this moment; of recounting his mother's death to his son, of attempting to explain the monstrosity responsible for taking his mother away, of showing his son that the world is not as safe as they would like to believe. He doesn't want to deal with that, but his son deserves an answer. He doesn't have a mother anymore; the least Tahno can give him is that.

But what can he say? How could he hope to explain the events that happened before his son's birth, that started everything eleven years ago when Korra first came to Republic City? How could he explain the terror they lived under? The uncertainty? The horrible emptiness that came with having your bending taken away? The morbid joy to which they all greeted news of Amon's death with? Their relief at their nightmare's end?

It was supposed to be over. They thought it was all over. But then reports started coming in earlier in the year, of people disappearing at riversides, at docks…only to appear later as twisted and misshapen bodies floating grotesquely downstream. Mako told them that people were becoming worried, that they were calling it the work of a vengeful water spirit; Tahno told him that it was a bunch of superstitious hogwash, but that was before a boat docked in Republic City with their passengers bent in the same unnatural way as a inner retaining wall dripped the red mark of Amon.

A rash of attacks followed soon after. Bodies filled the coroner's as interview requests filled Mako's desk. Lin came out of retirement; Korra began patrolling the city again; Amon showed himself the next night. He had survived the explosion of the boat, but the shock—of the blast, of losing his brother, of losing everything, of the inescapable wheel of fate—had broken him, narrowed his being to his name, his mask, and a thirst for vengeance. Benders and non-benders alike fell to his thirst for blood. The mask was once more a sign for despair for the city, and no one was safe. They were, after all, fighting with someone who no longer had anything to lose.

After months of fighting in alleys and the eaves of buildings, Korra held a last stand at Air Temple Island. Tenzin's family had been evacuated; it was her he wanted, after all, and while he hadn't been there personally—Korra had charged him with protecting their son—Tenzin and Lin had been, assisting Korra however they could. According to Lin, she had fought very bravely, down to her very last breath. Amon had been aiming to kill Korra in the Avatar-state—he wanted to end it with her—and he would have almost been successful if she hadn't managed to disengage from the state with seconds to spare as Amon crushed her heart in her chest and Korra returned the favor.

At the price of her life, Korra stopped Amon. She had saved the world, in more ways than one. If memory served him correctly, the girl Korra had been reincarnated into was just starting her fire-bending training.

At his knee, Akiak continues to play with his penguin-seal, and Tahno wonders how he will answer his son's question. Though Akiak is aware that his mother had been the Avatar, he does not know the gravity of the word any more than he understands death. He has not fully explained what the Avatar is, nor has he told Akiak about his mother's new body. (It was enough trouble explaining what reincarnation was to his son, let alone his mother's new reincarnated form.) The others have tried to help; Mako, Lin, and Tenzin have all offered to explain to the boy, but Tahno knows it is his duty. It is his job to explain to Akiak why his mother did what she did.

But it does not stop his head from spinning, or his dread from creeping up his spine like the grasp of a dead man's hand at all he will have to explain when he didn't even know that his wife could bloodbend. He wonders what other secrets she might have held, but he knows it is too late to ask. She has carried her secrets and all her other answers to the grave, leaving him with questions. Until they meet again, question will be his eternal keep. Until then, it will be his duty to explain what happened at that final battle; explain the birth of the shadow of the shadow of a man; explain the weight of a duty to a higher power…

He will have to explain a lot of things.

His son's small hand nudges his shin. "Why, dad?"

And for a moment, Tahno falters. He has no clue what to say, and he feels like a fool _and_—the words leap out of his mouth before he can even register his lips moving.

"She did it to protect us—to protect everyone. She did it because she didn't want anyone else to get hurt, and she did it because she loved you."

The answer leaves Akiak satisfied, but as the last syllable fades from the memory of his tongue, it leaves Tahno feeling achingly empty and cold. Immediately, he turns his gaze towards the window where he feels the warmth exit towards. It had been her favorite spot when she was still alive and he hopes she will be there…

But she isn't. All that is there is the moonlight as it shines through the casement window, and he tries not to let the disappointment show.

"Daddy, can I sleep here tonight?" Akiak asks, already situating himself in the middle of the bed, but both of them already know the answer to that.

"Yes, Akiak, of course," his father replies, pulling the boy closer to him. As he does, his hands brush over the spot where Korra sleeps and he wonders if Akiak notices the emptiness at his back…if he feels cold…if he feels anything at all. He hadn't cried much at Korra's funeral, but Tahno supposes it hasn't hit him yet. He dreads the day it does.

"Hey dad…"

"Yes, Akiak?"

"Do you miss mom too?"

The question hits him in the chest like a pack of charging komodo-rhino, and he bites his lip to keep from crying. "Yes, Akiak. I miss her a lot."

"And do you think…do you think mom knows how much we love her?"

And Tahno pulls his son in a little closer, holds him a little tighter, and takes a sharp inhale of air between tears. "Of course, son. All the time."

That night, as Tahno drifts off into sleep, he swears he sees Korra smiling at them on the windowsill.


End file.
